With the Tory party conference upon us, can you please settle a crucial issue: what male hair trends will we see emerging from the week?

Jon, Essex

Excellent question, Jon! Let us not allow ourselves to be distracted by the views of Jeremy Hunt and his non-specified "experts" on abortion, nor anything else women should and shouldn't be allowed to do with their bodies in the random personal view of Mr Hunt. Nor must we let our grief for the absence of Louise Me-me-me-Mensch take our attention away from the important issues at hand. Namely, what is the current hair trend for the average Tory male MP and what does that say about the party today.

In the past I have discussed the terrible baldism that is rife among the world of politics today, and how baldies are – for reasons baffling to this column – somehow precluded from leading a country. François Hollande is the most tonsorially challenged leader of a western country that I can think of off the top of my tonsorially less challenged head, and he is hardly bald. Nor, it feels pertinent to add here, have his tonsorial challenges in any way impeded his way with the ladeez, but I am getting a little off topic here.

Now, quite why male politicians should be obliged to big up their hair so much seems even more mysterious in light of last week's rent-a-media-friendly-study which claimed that men with relatively little hair upon their scalps are seen as more "masculine and dominant". It may at this point be worth noting that the man who conducted this study is, as funny chance would have it, bald himself.

Nonetheless, as tradition holds among politicians, the usual male Tory politician's hair is rich and thick [insert obvious joke here] and my prediction for the conference is that it will be richer and thicker than ever [insert even more obvious joke here], and that is down to one simple reason; one that begins with the letter B and has five letters. While you're all trying to fathom that tickler of an Ask Hadley quiz, I'll continue.

Hair among the Tory men has been getting bigger for some time. In general, Tory man's hair is not great anyway: it tends to be rather straw-like and have something of the "Lego hair" appearance to it, by which I mean it appears to be dropped from above atop the person's head with little thought for suitability or style and doesn't actually look real. Michael Fabricant is the true epitome of Tory Man Hair and I think we can all agree that the man works it.

But this is no longer quite enough for Tory Man. You see, as we all know, this conference is not about the Tories. It's about David Cameron v Boris Johnson. Just as Cameron's recent appearance on David Letterman's show in America was about Dave v Boris. Heck, everything's about Dave v Boris these days. This morning I decided to have porridge instead of toast and that, too, was about Dave v Boris (Dave with his newfangled modern ways is obviously toast and unreconstructed Boris is so very, very obviously porridge.)

Yes, Boris is the man of the moment, really, in the Tory party, despite not actually being in the cabinet, and if that isn't strange enough, then the thought that his hair is an inextricable part of his appeal truly is something to muse upon. With its faux-casual appearance, endearing (to many) scruffiness and absolute resistance to baldness (age cannot wither that barnet), Boris's hair is the very symbol of the modern Tory party. Cameron's, by contrast, looks both stiff and receding. Osborne's, ominously for him in the current Tory climate, is beating a retreat faster than Cameron from a Boris Fan Club meeting.

Elsewhere, though, others are going the other way. Now, I'm not saying anyone's gone and done a Wayne Rooney here, but Grant Shapps' hair is, to me, as intriguing as his multiple identities and fluctuating Twitter-follower numbers. Where once it seemed close to disappearing, these days it is positively fulsome, suggesting that perhaps he is not human but rather a Chia Pet. Desmond Swayne's is looking rather Borisified these days while Oliver Letwin's hair continues to be its own tourist destination.

So in short, for the upcoming Tory hair trends I'm thinking big, I'm thinking bold and most of all, like everyone else at the conference, I'm thinking Boris.